Retsin is one of the most unfairly overlooked bands that I can think of right now. I blame this to some mysterious dark force that has the duo, formed by Tara Jane O'Neil and Cynthia Nelson, marked down as a "side-project". After seven years of fine records you couldn't be further off to think that way. There's nothing side-projecty about Retsin. Even their first release, Salt Lick, lacks the traits of the solo-album or side-project disease. Nevertheless, having been in Rodan and The Sonora Pine or toured as a bass player with Come it's not as easy to surprise people. Though it is possible, and Tara Jane O'Neil proved it on the Quarterstick release Peregrine last year.

Retsin's newest release is Cabin in the Woods, an album actually recorded in one cabin located somewhere in upstate New York. Rather than rave about musical maturity - something surpassed by Sweet Luck of Amaryllis (also released on Carrot Top)-, I'll cite some of the most interesting things on the new record. These are a superior control over the sound and the rediscovery of a more classic folk sound as a means of experimentation (listen to the banjo on "Dog and Butterfly" for example).

For Tara evolution and change is simply the surfacing of things that were with them all along; even in her Rodan days or Cynthia's in Ruby Falls. So Retsin began without a fixed idea of what they were going to sound like, but with a clear notion on how they wanted to play.

"As far as our vision of what we are we didn't really have one. I think we just wanted to play music and have fun and do it together and play guitar - cause we'd played guitar, but we were both in bands where we played bass - and we wanted to record at home and these things which we still do. If anything, the music has just tightened and we've kind of honed in and kind of focused on just songs... thinking about what we're gonna do before we do it other than just kind of diving in.... So I think it's all kind of the same."

But of course all this has influenced their music. "We certainly sound a lot different. I guess I've started listening to a lot more old time music in the last two years than I did before. But I guess - for me at least- it's kind of the same thing I was not so much into punk rock. I just kind of found myself there. I was always into Joni Mitchell. Those things kind of hold true and did back then for me."

Retsin. Photographed by Mike Galinsky.

And in the same way, instinctively, Retsin embody the spirit of DIY just as much or even more than most punk bands. Not just by recording at home, but by coordinating their musical careers with other arts: literary in Cynthia's case and visual in Tara's. "Miggie and Carla have a shop and I have put some art on the walls... they sold a couple of things there. But I've been doing other art shows in galleries and those go very well. The couple that I've done I've sold a lot of things. We'll take some little items on tour to sell. ". They also collaborate in these fields, an example of this is Cynthia's book of poems, The Kentucky Rules, published by New York's Soft Skull Press and illustrated by Tara.

>>>